Why should you spend time bringing something larger than you into your writing (and your reading)? Why does it matter to you as a creative, someone who wanders the world, travels (literally or in books), who lives in many languages…as a writer?
Maybe the more important question is, why should you bring something larger than yourself into your life?
As writers, creatives, and humans, we lose when we forget to go beyond ourselves.
Something happens when you only focus on your immediate worries, that next thing you think you have to do, that deadline (or headline) that has all your attention.
You lose something…
You lose perspective.
You don’t worry about the right things. Maybe you have your ‘best’ business year ever--while your kids grow older in the way that makes you wonder where the time went. And the world gets a degree or two hotter.
You lose creativity.
All those beautiful thoughts and random, but wonderful ideas that come into you mind like unruly butterflies or like a robin on a windowsill on a bright winter morning.
You’ll ignore those gifts when your world shrinks down to a hyperfocused pinprick.
You lose resilience.
Because when you step in that puddle, miss that deadline, don’t reach that goal, earn less this year--whatever--it feels like the world is ending. There is nothing great and wise and breathtaking to take you out of that feeling.
The Pont du Gard…something that reminded me recently of the way we are part of something larger.
Your writing will probably be pretty boring too.
I guess when you put things in a list like this, writing seems maybe not to be the highest priority. But for those of us who live and breathe the written word…it matters too.
Have you ever read something that left you breathless. Or changed the way you thought about the world?
Think about it. It almost certainly came from someone who spends time thinking about something larger than themselves. Who asks big questions, and searches for answers maybe. Or just more questions. Who spends time revering something: nature, the galaxy, the human spirit. Who takes time to be inspired. Awed. Who searches for perspectives in other cultures, points in history. And who brings this all back to you.
The good news is this: You don’t have to choose your writing or your life.
Do something good for yourself, for humanity, for your life. Your writing will follow.
Ready to give it a try? Read on for tiny prompts you can do (whether you know you’re a writer…or not).
3 short and easy ways to bring something larger than yourself into your writing (and your life).
Ok, so we’ve decided. It’s time to focus on the butterflies and the wildflowers, the robins, the climate and our children with their downy baby hair disappearing and adolescence way closer than we’re comfortable with!
How is a writer to do this? The goal seems…big.
Here are three tiny and fast reading and writing excursions that you can go on anytime you like. And once you get started, they’re completely doable. Maybe they’ll become your new habit.
You’ll notice that all of these start with reading. Because when you read, that is when you start your writing journey. Try it and see…
#1: Read something inspiring and write a ‘found poem’.
Let’s say you are thinking about a natural phenomenon, a local heatwave, days of endless rain, the comings and goings of a tiny woodland mouse, a butterfly, the universe, the secret life of fungi…
Find some reading on a topic that fascinates you. In the language you’d love to write in and reflect in. Don’t skip travel blogs and publications, geography, politics, human rights, positive news stories, scientific reviews. They are full of awe, inspiration--and rather incredible vocabulary.
This is ripe territory for meditating on something larger than yourself and picking out words to get your writing.
The found poem works like this:
As you read and enjoy, pick out words you love, or that intrigue you.
See if you can weave them into a sentence (with our without words you add yourself).
Then break that sentence into lines until it begins to look like a poem.
No it doesn’t have to rhyme or have a specific rhythm.
No, you don’t have to publish it or share it with the world.
Just write, enjoy and practice bringing something larger than yourself into your life and your writing.
Need an example? Here’s one I wrote about the Sirocco sands--a phenomenon here in Europe where sands from the Sahara lift up and travel over the sea to light the sky red and deliver a golden dust on top of the snow. I skied on it, wondered about it, read about it…and voila!
Now it’s your turn…
#2: Read something inspiring and write a ‘word story’.
This basically starts in the same place as with your first prompt.
Say you’re really interested in the history of a place you visited this summer. You wandered at the foot of Roman ruins. Or visited a cave that took hundreds, thousands of years to form. You are in awe. Or stood at the foot of an old-growth sequoia. Perfect. Find something written about that.
Then select a few words you love from whatever you read. Write them down by hand. Enjoy them.
Savor them.
Then grab your pen and see if you can write a piece of micro-fiction with that story. Again, don’t try to control your story. Just see what comes up.
Maybe it stays in the experimental stage--it is still a wonderful exercise for your writing and your life.Or maybe you come back to it later and cut here, add there…and you really like it. It doesn’t happen every single time and it doesn’t have to. But you’ll never find that story you really like if you don’t write a few first.
Need an example? Here is a word story I wrote after reading a passage from the Novel Woman at 1000 degrees.
#3: Go experience something larger than yourself--and write all over the page…
What makes you think of something larger than yourself?
What makes you feel small compared to the vast, incredible, intelligent world around you?
Looking up at the night sky and the stars, sitting under a stand of trees near your home,
Visiting an ancient site in your country--or another one,
Going on a pilgrimage to a spiritual site…or to the sea or the mountains…
Sometimes it’s important to pick up and go.
Have a moment. Enjoy an experience.
And capture it in the page.
Sometimes we forget, writing is about so much more than the actual act of writing. Writing is not just you at your desk.
And, of course, neither is living.
After you go out and wander, when you get home, try this writing prompt:
Write one word or one sentence in the middle of a horizontal sheet of paper.
All around it, start writing whatever comes to mind. Whatever you saw, felt, tasted, experienced. Whatever you imagined, remembered, anticipated, associated with your wanderings (near or far).
For example, when I returned from visiting the Pont Du Garde here in France, I wrote down:
People who came before me…
And all around that I started writing about the experience. Words cam about the way it felt to have a sunset picknick under a structure that was built by so many people and so long ago. Words appeared about the people who came before me--the cultures, the famous people, the unknown, my own ancestors. People who inspired me…
And then my brain zoomed out further--to the people who will come after.
In writing as in life, it’s important to wander sometimes.
When you wander, you never know what’s going to happen.
Maybe you’ll do kind of writing that might lead you to a story, a poem, a blog post. Or maybe you’ll just ‘just’ change your life by thinking of future generations—and deciding to do things a bit differently.
Either way, it’s worth every (delicious) second you spend on it.
It reminds you of being alive and human.
Which is, incidentally, an essential practice for any would-be writer.
What will you come up with on your reading and writing adventure?
Will you find inspiration in some news that is good for a change?
Will you write a journal entry that will change your life?
A blog post that will change someone else’s?
Will you remember what it’s like to be alive or to live with future generations in mind?
Will you write for an audience or ‘just’ for yourself?
Wherever this journey takes you, I’d love to hear about it.
Let me know in the comments.
Or join our tiny community of multilingual writers and share your experience, your words, or your snapshots there…
Are you a vagabond, a reader, and maybe a writer too?
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